The Bucket List: Porsche Supercup at Spa, Belgium & Monza, Italy

Photos and Story by Harry Kennison

I guess all of us have a "bucket list" of things we'd like to do
before we leave this Earth. For many of us, buying our first Porsche
might have been on our bucket lists and, because you're reading this
newsletter, you have obviously already crossed this one off your list.
In my case, Formula 1 races I haven't attended but have wanted to go
to since I started following racing when I was eleven years old have
been on my personal bucket list for far too long. And the Belgian
Grand Prix held at Spa and the Italian Grand Prix held at Monza have
been right at the top. I'm pleased to report that I've now crossed
them off my list, having attended both races on back-to-back weekends
in September.

First up was Spa. Located in the Ardennes Forest near the Belgian
border with Germany, it is considered by many, including yours truly,
to be the most challenging circuit on the grand prix calendar. The
4.3 mile circuit is also home to one of the most famous turns in
racing, Eau Rouge, which is a left kink at the bottom of a steep hill
taken flat out at 19,000 rpm by today's F-1 cars. Television coverage
just doesn't convey the steepness of the turn's entrance or uphill
exit—you simply have to see it to believe it. Spa is a circuit that
is also notorious for rain, and this year was no exception. Although
the rain held off until the final two laps of the F-1 race, when it
came, it resulted in one of the closest and most controversial
finishes of the year. British phenom Lewis Hamilton won on the track
in his silver McLaren but was later given a 25-second penalty for his
coming together with Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen, dropping Hamilton
to 3rd place and a scant one point lead in the championship over
Felipe Massa in the other Ferrari who inherited the victory. But lest
I digress into the political world of Formula 1, let's get down to the
preliminary event that's near and dear to our hearts, the Porsche
Supercup.

What could be better? A pro racing series of 30–35 nearly identical
Porsche GT3's cranking out 420 horsepower and running on the same
tracks that host the Formula 1 races on the same weekend. The racing
is intense to say the least, as success can mean a factory ride at Le
Mans, ALMS, or the Rolex series. The Porsche Supercup winner at Spa
was 21-year-old Sean Edwards, who proved to be a wet-weather expert in
the slick conditions at Spa.

My longtime racing buddy, Rich Mitter, took a few days off enjoying
Lucerne, Switzerland before we made our way down to Lake Como, Italy
for the Italian Grand Prix (it was a dirty job, but somebody had to do
it). Although we'd hoped for sunny skies, it turned out to be the
wettest weekend in 27 years at the fabled Monza track. The rain also
produced the youngest first-time winner in history, 21-year-old
Sebastian Vettel, driving for the upstart Toro Rosso team.

The Porsche Supercup race looked more like a Friday night short-track
shoot-out than a sports-car race, with cars bumping and grinding and
sliding through the Variante Chicane. Eventually, Nicolas Armindo
emerged triumphant in his GT3.